Mercurial and Mercurial-server : playing with DVCS (part 1)

Version control systems (VCS) are an indispensable tool when programming and sharing code even for small groups. Even while programming alone, but on different computers, a version control system could easily prove useful for securely sharing code between desktop and laptop computer. I use daily SVN, as version control while at work. For my homely experiments, instead, I decided to install something different: Mercurial, a distributed version control system (DVCS). Distributed version control systems, most famous are Git and Mercurial, do not rely on a central server to keep the code repository, in DVCS every developing computer keeps its own copy of the repository. What interested me in DVCS was the capability to do version control also when off-line and also, of course, the chance to learn something new.

Installing Mercurial (command-line and plugged-in)

Installing Mercurial command-line version it's quite trivial:

sudo apt-get install mercurial

Both Eclipse and Netbeans offers their plug-ins to interface with Mercurial. Netbeans plug-in is already provided with version 7.3.1 I have installed on the EEEPC. On Eclipse, desktop-side, installing the MercurialEclipse plug-in has been as simple as selecting it from the Eclipse Marketplace and following installation wizard.

Back to Ubuntu : installed Ubuntu Gnome 13.04 on the EEEPC

I've been using Mint 12 on the EEEPC since February 2012. it worked fine all this time but, what I really missed was the ability to upgrade the distribution to a new release without the need of a full installation. After the recent positive test I eventually decided to install on my net-book Ubuntu Gnome 13.04.

Installation

As usual the installation process begun by backing-up my home folder and preparing a bootable USB disk. I booted the EEEPC from the USB disk and started the installation program. The installation sequence was definitively the same I encountered while installing Ubuntu. Like then, the only interesting part has been the disk partitioning part. I use the 4GB SSD EEEPC disk as boot disk for windows (I like to play some old games every now and then) so I must be sure the installation goes all on the 16GB secondary SSD.

I selected the “Something else” custom partitioning option that brings to the partition editor.

Unfortunately the disk partitioning tool is bigger than the EEEPC 900 screen: here is the full window (I got it with the 'alt-print screen' screen-shot shortcut)

Test Drive: Linux Mint 15 “Olivia” on the EEEPC

Less than a couple of months passed from latest Ubuntu arrival and the new Linux Mint 15 (codenamed Olivia) also has been released. I prepared a bootable USB disk in order to give it a look. I was, as usual, mostly interested to the new Cinnamon version (1.8) it comes with.

First impressions

Linux Mint welcomes you with a reassuring plain old styled desktop.

The application menu is responsive and it fits quite well even on the small EEEPC screen.

Ubuntu 13.04 on Veriton S661 (Full Install)

It's time of major upgrades for my desktop computer: I just bought a graphics card and a bigger hard-drive. Knowing I was going to hardware-upgrade kept me from upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04 as soon as it's been made available. I was going soon to have to install it on the new drive.

To be precise I didn't exactly put the new drive on my desktop computer: I bought a new 1TB hard-drive I put on my NAS. It's the 500GB drive I previously used in the NAS the one I placed in the desktop.

So, after copying all the data to the new drive I booted from a USB drive and I begun to install.

Partitioning the disk

I've never been a many-partitions advocate but, with a 500GB disk, some partitioning is needed. I decided to partition the disk with GParted before starting the installation. I split the disk in two partitions of about a one-to-four ratio plus a little 5GB partition to be used as swap.

since I use my desktop computer mostly for home video and slide-shows editing the bigger partition will be destined to be mounted as /home folder.

Slick2D on Netbeans (and the EEEPC)

This post is sort of a corollary at my previous post: after trying Slick2D on my desktop computer, and Eclipse, I decided to port the demo projects to Netbeans, on the EEEPC, where I do many of my programming experiments.

The use Slick2D with Netbeans is covered, in the site wiki, as well as the Eclipse case. The first step is creating a Java application project

once the project has been created Slick2D and LWJGL Java libraries must be added to the project class-path. This can be done by selecting one-by-one the needed JAR files but, if you're going to make more than one project setting-up a custom library will be handier.

So I, from the project properties, I selected the libraries folder then the “Add Library ...” button.